Sunday, May 22, 2016

This Week (& a Change in Format)

"This Week" posts every other week will continue to be followed by posts on data and relational fundamentals, but with a twist: each of the latter posts will explain the preceding week's "What's wrong with this picture?". Here's the first post in the new format

1. What's wrong with this picture?

"Data is stored in two-dimensional tables consisting of columns (fields) and rows (records). Multi-dimensional data is represented by a system of relationships among two-dimensional tables. This usually leads to data storage becoming redundant, and also difficult to maintain on account of addition and deletion anomalies. This is only the case if we do not normalize the data. Keys are fields or combinations of fields used to identify records." --Nigel Peck, Denormalization Summary

2. Quote of the Week

"Relations are multidimensional. They are not flat. They are not two dimensional. Don't let the term table mislead you." I read the above statement on the back cover of CJ Date book on relational theory "Database in depth". Can anyone help how to visualize this multidimensional nature of relations?" --LinkedIn.com